Suppose 1,000 people take part in the following experiment.
Each participant is given a fair coin, which they proceed to flip one or more times, recording the outcome. As long as their coin turns up heads they keep flipping it. As soon as a tail comes up (but not before) they immediately stop flipping their coin.
What is the expected proportion of heads recorded versus the number of tails?
(This problem is usually framed a bit differently but I think the version given above is preferable to the traditional one.)
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Another Classic Problem
Saturday, 8 Mar 2025, 22:41
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This is from Bouffon the 18 century French, statistician, I believe. I also believe, that it is high timed I looked at my maths notes, again, having been on a data science module, for about 21 weeks.